1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printing service using a network.
2. Description of the Related Art
Following the spread of the Internet recently, service systems are being provided for generating a postcard or the like by printing a composite image generated from characters and an image provided on the Web. In such a system, the characters representing an address or a greeting are input by a user from his/her terminal, and combined with the image provided on the Web for generating the composite image.
Such a composite image may be generated from a user image and a template, and how the composite image looks can be confirmed in advance in some cases (see U.S. Pat. Laid-Open No. 20010027454.
When a postcard or the like is generated by printing a composite image generated from an image and characters combined together according to a template, characters in the postcard may be different from the characters that a user has input. This case is observed if Japanese character conversion programs (programs used by front-end processors or the like) are different between a personal computer of the user and a server. If the programs are not the same, a character code displayed normally on the personal computer of the user (such as a character in the JIS (Japan Industrial Standard) level-3 kanji set or an external character registered by the user) is printed as a different character on the postcard. Furthermore, the user may make a mistake upon input of the characters. In this case, the composite image is printed as a postcard having the wrong characters printed thereon if the user does not realize the mistake.
These problems are hard to avoid because the composite image displayed on the Web has a low resolution so that the characters cannot be confirmed clearly in the composite image. If a high-resolution image is displayed in order to avoid these problems, the characters are easy to confirm, since the image is not degraded even if the image is enlarged. However, content to be protected by copyright, such as a cartoon character, can also be enlarged without degradation of the quality, which may lead to illegal use of the content. Therefore, a high-resolution image that enables enlargement of the content cannot be displayed.